FREE WEBINAR: Creating Meaningful Customer Experience

Tuesday, October 22, 2013 − 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM MDT

Creating meaningful Customer Experience with Unified CX Solutions

Register Now Win an iPad Mini!

One of the key elements of any CRM plan is integration, the unification of all your company’s data sources and silo systems to create a single, holistic view of each customer.. Whether they are, business organization or system-based silos, they all conspire to make customer journeys fragmented, painful and costly.

A typical customer journey includes interactions via contact center, corporate portals and conventional emails. Yes every call, every click, every message counts. Enabling these journey points is paramount and Oracle is privileged to assist you in the strategic components to this journey via this webinar.

Face language and body language are important components in everyday communication. Many times you may be hearing something, but the other person would be meaning something totally different. They may be hiding the real message intentionally or unintentionally.

Either way, success in communication happens only when we understand the real message, whether the other person likes it or not. Experts would be able to get this purely by observing body language, tons of research material (and criticism) is available on this subject.

What if there is a special body language, where you don’t have to “guess” at all, but the other person leaves clear signals which can be used to find out their real intentions?

Such a tool may not be feasible in real life, but in digital media, you always provide such signals. It may be simply visiting a website, or spending quality time there on a particular article. If someone cares to collect those signals, they can pretty much make out your intentions.

Oracle calls this “Digital Body Language”. Their Marketing Cloud (Eloqua) has a unique process which can analyze a web user’s behaviors such as web site visits, white paper downloads, social interactions, searches, Email responses and more, and can create an intelligent guess on their intentions.

This information is extremely valuable to marketers. While they traditionally depended on information such as demographics, purchase patters of their customers, now they can find out exactly what those customers intend to do on your website, and target accordingly. These micro segments will be much more powerful and likely to get you results.

While this information is extremely useful in campaign management, Sales teams also can find good uses for it. Let us say you are meeting a customer and would like to know their past interactions before speaking to them, digital body language analysis can give some unique insights to win that deal.

Modern business is a digital game and tools like Oracle Marketing Cloud can help you stay ahead! Visit CRMIT to Know more. www.crmit.com

Anyone who has gone through the process of setting up a B2B (Business to Business) Account with a Bank would swear by the poor experience they are met with due to highly inefficient and ineffective client On-boarding process that they are subjected to. Banks these days have to realize this to ensure they make the first best impressions to their clients to avoid losing them to competitors.

Though part of the problem is compounded by ever growing regulatory compliance requirements like Anti Money Laundering, Terrorist Funding, Foreign Tax Account Compliance Act etc that the Banks have to adhere to, they just cover only one side of Poor Client On-Boarding experience.

The primary reason for poor on-boarding experience is attributed to few other reasons too.

Viewing the process of Client on-boarding as a back office operation than as an engaging front office with collaborative back-office framework to seamlessly work with numerous back office groups who play a facilitator role in the on-boarding process

Though putting in place a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is not a magic wand that wipe-out all the issues listed above in one go without fundamental change in the way Organizations operate, an effectively designed / implemented CRM that mitigates the above challenges can be a sure differentiator for Banks to improve not only the customer experience but also the Net Customer Life Cycle Value.

Here I have articulated few suggestions and tips on how a CRM system can help Organizations to effectively improve the client on-boarding process.

On lack of customer centric system…

It is never going to be an easy task to just like that replace your product centric legacy back-end systems in one go into a customer centric system. The next viable best alternative available over here is to put an overarching CRM system that wraps your entire product centric core banking systems and make the CRM as a Centralized front office Application for your Relationship managers, Product Specialists and other Sales / marketing teams. The key design attributes of this CRM to facilitate On-Boarding should be below.

For new customers to be on-boarded, enrich the basic prospect data that you have collected in CRM with rich info that is available by integrating with Trusted Data Service Providers like D&B, Hovers etc. These systems provide very rich info about your clients like Client Organization Structure, Business diversity, Geographic Diversity, Key Client Contacts & their profile, financial data etc. This ensures a lot of info is already built in your system to do your KYC (Know Your Customer) as well as Risk Rating / Assessment in an effective manner by asking minimal info from your customers.

For existing customers, ensure your customer profile details (demographic, relationship, financials etc) spread across multiple internal products centric systems are cleaned and de-duplicated in the new CRM system. This would make it easier to facilitate on-boarding of existing customers to some your new products & services lot easier eliminating duplicity in asking info from customers that you have already with you.

On collaboration…

It is a common phenomenon observed in many Banking Organizations that Customer On-Boarding is considered either as a complete Back End (risk, legal, finance etc) responsibility or in few cases as sold Front end responsibility forgetting the underlying need of effective collaboration of front-end and back-end teams to make it easier for the customers.

The CRM one deploys should have all ways and means to make this collaboration between back-end, front-end teams and customers possible without any compromise on data security. The collaboration could be facilitated by in-built email management solutions in CRM, a self-service portal that is integrated with CRM where customers can log-in and have visibility on his on-boarding process as well as share / submit additional info & documents needed, an internal discussion thread / business social features that can make interaction between back-end and front-end teams lot seamless and easier etc. In reality today many of these happen in an adhoc & in-efficient manual manner making it a time consuming as well as frustrating experience for the end customers.

On KPI Measurements…

None of the above systems and processes would work unless people on the ground are mandated to adhere to stringent KPI (Key Performance Indicator)/ SLA (Service Level Agreement). Assuming there is a commitment at the top to make it possible in having them in place, the CRM should provide support to have in place interactive dashboards and reports to report on these KPIs to identify the bottlenecks in the process and streamline it. The reports / metrics can be as simple as one that provides info on on-boarding throughput, performance of adherence to SLAs by various departments managing the on-boarding process, overall lead time, ageing analysis to identify critical bottlenecks etc. The KPIs should serve as a key input to your performance management team to see continuous improvement over a period of time.

So in net, going back to my original point, would like to share that Customer On-Boarding is an important process in establishing a new relationship with your client and making it effective / efficient with a well designed CRM system can make a big difference to Banks as well to Customer Experience.

Continuing our discussion (Part 1, Part 2) on CRM systems, this article will be more focused towards how Oracle CRM On Demand (CRMOD) can facilitate you with itinerary management. As it is said, “more the travelers can do online; more the company’s bottom line reaps benefits”. It is very important to have a solution that can empower your customers to handle travel transactions without picking up the phone. And surely you also might be having such reliable solutions. But what do you do to record these itineraries in your database for future reference? Do you do it manually on excel sheets? Or you are still dealing with good amount of paper work for this?

With CRM On-Demand systems itinerary is managed in a well organized manner. Think of a scenario, where people visit your website and make a booking for a particular destination. Now with integrated CRMOD system, you need not to manually enter this data in some excel sheets for future reference.

CRM On-Demand pulls the information directly from the website and makes the entire process absolutely effortless. The biggest advantage of this system is that if your customers are willing to book a customized itinerary, you can easily manage the information in CRMOD system and use it for future purposes, as well.

Now let us see the benefits of custom itinerary management with CRM On-Demand.

First of all, with this kind of information being saved in your CRMOD systems will allow you to serve another customer with a similar itinerary and recommend him the best of your services, accordingly. You can propose him an accommodation that was preferred by the previous traveler and can also share his experience with the new customer. Moreover, a little bit of extra knowledge about the accommodation like the rooms, facilities, tariff, surroundings and other stuff will help you serve your customer even better.

Apart from this, based on the travel data like destination, mode of travel and accommodation, you can also offer best packages available. When you have the records saved in your system, you can also offer packages on special occasions like anniversary, birthdays etc. The best part is when you have all the traveler information, you can also offer packages as per specific interests like for photography, sight seeing, sea viewing, and hiking to name a few.

In the previous article, we discussed about how Oracle CRM On Demand (CRMOD) can help Travel Industry through various facets. Here we will discuss in detail how CRMOD can integrate with travel and tourism vertical.

Currently, online reservations are the most preferred choices for travelling. For instance, think of a situation, where more than fifty people are visiting your website in a day. Half of them make online booking for specific destinations, while some of them just enquire and rest cancel their reservations. What do you do to make a record of this? Do you store all these records and customer information in excel files? And if yes, how do you sort this data when you need it?

Now think of a Software-as-a-Service (Saas) that captures visitor’s information and allows you to view this data in a more organized manner. With this, you can keep a track of all the visitors who have made an inquiry or have made reservations or even who have cancelled their trips. Doesn’t that seem more convenient?

CRM On-Demand provides you an easy way to store information about every visitor who visits your website and makes an inquiry. This is done regardless of the fact that online reservation has been made or not.

Now let us discuss this in detail.

This is the home page of CRM On-Demand. It not only allows you to keep a track record of all the visitors who visited your website, but also stores other required information, as well. The word “lead” here refers to any individual or group of individuals that show interest in making a booking through your services.

This was just the phase one. And if any of the visitors approach you for booking a trip through office-visit, website, phone call or email, you can add him as your contact and create an account for your new customer. CRM On-Demand allows you to convert any of the “leads” as contacts and add all the necessary details.

Once the booking is confirmed, you can save all the required documents and credentials in CRMOD directly and can manage this information for future reference. This provides you a secured way to mange your customer records including visa, passport, birth certificate etc. In addition to this, it also helps you send notification mails to your customers, for instance, reminding them for passport or visa renewal and travel insurance,

In addition to this, CRM On-Demand is available as a cloud application, that is, you need not to install or download. In fact, this On-Demand solution is available on premise.

We have a curious problem in our apartment, Not something which can be resolved by calling a plumber or electrician.

There are 8 flats in this apartment and we have a small association of owners. We meet once in a while and discuss things such as maintenance fee, current issues, possible solutions etc.,

In paper, this sounds good, But in reality, it’s near impossible for us to gather all the house owners (just 8 of them) in one place. So, we kept postponing these meetings and many issues went untouched.

One fine day, we decided to sort this by using the power of internet. Someone created an Email group, asked all the owners to join there and we started interacting regularly. As we could read / respond to Emails offline at our convenience, this was very useful and we all liked it.

All, except two.

One of these owners, had an Email ID, But never used it. So he missed all important updates and was always raising a flag on every issue ‘when did you discuss this? I am not even aware of it!’

‘But we sent you an Email.’

‘Sorry, I don’t check my mail at all, you should have called me in phone and informed.’

Another owner, didn’t even know what an Email is. In fact, he never touched a computer in his life till date. So, he missed all updates too.

Thankfully, the other 6 owners had active Email IDs, and were checking / responding to Emails. But we could see some mismatches in the frequency of checking Emails, for example, couple of us checked Emails every few minutes, while others did it by end of the day, or even end of the week. As a result, we couldn’t make any decisions fast enough.

To summarize, eventho’ we had an Email group and discussing things, there is no assurance that all the concerned people get updated promptly. This brings down the overall effectiveness of the Email Group itself.

If this is the case with just 8 members, imagine what will happen with Marketing teams trying to push messages to hundreds of thousands of customers in their CRM Database. You may be sending a beautiful Email Newsletter, but 20% of your contacts may never open it, another 20% may open it late, effectively spoiling your party.

With “Social” messages, the risk is even higher. Most of your contacts in the CRM Database, may not be active in Social Media / check updates regularly, What is the point in touching base with them at great expense? May be they need to be contacted in a different channel?

To take care of this serious communication issue, it is advisable for marketing organizations to start analyzing their existing contacts and split them into different buckets such as:

Email Aware

Email Active

Social Media Aware

Social Media Active

None

This is just a sample, we may have more buckets like this, but the point is, if we know how active the contact is in various channels (by just asking them, “What is your preferred mode of communication? Email / Phone/ Twitter / Facebook / Others?”) we can push the same message to different people in different channels and expect a higher HIT Rate.

For example, a single campaign message may go to 20% of my contacts via direct mail (Post), another 20% in Email, 40% by Social Media etc., based on the bucket where they are. This way we ensure that a message has a higher chance of making an impact, by not falling on an inactive inbox / facebook wall.

Today’s increasingly competitive travel industry caters to different types of tourism needs, but actually, identifying, developing and retaining high value customers has become increasingly difficult for entrepreneurs. Refining customer needs and building customized value proposals is not the only strategic move for businesses to survive this competition, but you also need something very reliable to depend on.

Since tourism has become a major source of revenue for many regions, there is a clear need for a solution that can facilitate managing information on customer requirements, economics and contextual data for delivering the right kind of offer to the right person. And this should be possible, bearing in mind the budget factor.

In this article, we will discuss how Oracle CRM On Demand (CRMOD) can help Travel Industry through various facets.

CRM On-Demand is a one-stop solution that offers plethora of features for managing customer information in a methodical manner. Think of a scenario where complexity of your business structure and growing marketing demands start creating issues for you and you lose a lot of data that ultimately leads to ambiguity. CRM On-Demand provides a single platform to record all customer interactions with agents, ranging from flight schedule inquiries to ticket reservations, cancellations, changes and customer feedback.

CRM On-Demand’s biggest return on investment is the ability to integrate the best practices in process management which in turn will help the business to track activities for resolving customer inquiries, improving customer relationships through maintenance of accurate customer information, agent efficiency and many other activities.

Usually, information flows in from diverse channels like websites, e-mails, faxes and is lost amid the huge amount of data that is typical of almost all companies. Also, to make matters worse this data is not stored at a central repository. Not only does this complicate the business processes, it also impacts the end user satisfaction.

In this complex scenario, CRM On-Demand facilitates with a centralized repository which provides a uniform and robust platform. This platform supports customers and effectively manages issues, concerns and clarifications logged by them. And the best part is that CRM On-Demand solution can be customized to suit specific organizational requirements.